Expansion (1945 - 1965)
Guiding Students
Counselors were not needed in secondary education prior to 1945 because a number of conditions had not yet emerged.
As higher education grew into a mass industry and as identifying talent became a national imperative, educators and others focused on the guidance of young people. The field of guidance counseling emerged in the 1950s because of these conditions.
Guidance counselors helped students make decisions about careers and higher education planning. They utilized standardized tests, including the College Board's tests, to aid in sorting and guiding students into appropriate academic tracks.
The federal government even provided funds for guidance counseling as its contribution to expanding educational access and sorting students. The National Defense Education Act (NDEA) included money for state-funded counselor programs. With this, experienced teachers moved into counseling, and money for materials was available for approximately 15 years.
In this atmosphere, education's sorting function became more prominent. Many believed that education would produce the great sorting that would enable the talented to be identified and properly trained to meet society's manpower needs.
Along with the general concern over guidance of youth and academics in the 1950s, educators and society had a heightened concern about the gifted or talented students. Educators wanted to ensure that talented youth were sufficiently challenged by their secondary and higher education course work. Educators openly discussed the need to search for intellectual talent.
Finally, as financial aid became necessary to ensure access to a wider clientele, counselors became necessary to help students make decisions about career and higher education planning.
College Board officials recognized that if institutions of higher education wanted to maintain enrollment growth and insure access to a wide clientele, then guidance and testing of students were necessary to identify candidates of collegiate material.
The College Board introduced two programs in the 1950s that required counselors in schools. For the Advanced Placement Program (APP), counselors were needed to help students realize that they could take higher education courses in the high school APP. With the College Scholarship Service, counselors were needed to help students decide whether to go to college and which college to choose. Counselors also helped students navigate financial aid to attend college.
The College Board had previously urged the use of its tests as tools in guidance and placement of students. In this new climate that emphasized guidance, even old tools such as the SAT took on added significance and needed special directions for use.
One of the College Board's new tests, the Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test, or PSAT, served as an inexpensive practice test for the SAT because students were taking the SAT twice to improve their scores. The scores of the PSAT stayed in schools and were used in guidance of students in college selection.
In a lecture given to the High School Counselors Conference in 1960 entitled "The Case for the College Board Tests," College Board official George Hanford stressed the importance of counselors to the admissions process. Hanford urged using the SAT as a tool but cautioned that tests were only part of a College Board program enabling the transition from secondary to higher education.
Even with promoting the use of College Board tests as guidance tools, the Board advised against misuse of the test. In a College Board publication for school counselors, admissions officers, students, and parents, the Board described the common errors in test score interpretation and the origins of these misunderstandings. The College Board advised that cut-off scores should not be used in determining where to place students.
